While Origin will be the exclusive digital retailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic (in other words, if you want to buy it online and download it, you’ll do so through Origin) that does not mean that Origin is required for you to access or play The Old Republic.

Origin is a digital storefront, and the desktop application is there to give you quick access to Origin exclusives and deals.

However, you won’t need to launch the Origin application to run The Old Republic, nor will you patch the game via Origin. Once the game is on your hard disk, you’ll be connecting to our servers to patch and launch the game, and Origin does not have to be running to do that.

To answer another question - boxed versions of the game will include the client on DVD(s).

It's only within the last year or so that they've really pushed the concept of having frequent sales, before that, they were much more rare.

I can remember Steam sales going back as far as three years before my memory starts getting fuzzy. They started promotional events at least that far back, they are more reliable in their appearance now but its been way longer than a year.

EA's digital distro service, in the past, was awful. Even if Origin is better, I don't like EA, and would prefer to do business with Steam.

EA is doing this simply to try to get a slice of the Steam pie, and based on EA's prior track record, I'm betting their service will NOT be something I want to be involved with.

I don't really agree with the idea of dismissing it out of hand but in this case they appear to be trying to create a walled garden with their own titles so you appear to be right. At least they were smart enough to not force things through Origin(yet), that's one you have to give them as a smart decision which is encouraging. I suspect it has more to do with Biowares involvement than EA but either way it's a good thing.